Sergey Kovalev Showing Continued Improvement and Frightening Potential

Sergey Kovalev is the legitimate light heavyweight champion of the world.

Don’t believe me?

Maybe a word or two from a guy who has a certain amount of authority on the subject will sway you?

“The perception and the reality is, and the fans know, I hear it wherever I travel, Sergey [Kovalev] is the light heavyweight champion of the world by the perception of the people,” former undisputed middleweight and light heavyweight kingpin Bernard Hopkins told Bleacher Report.

“Even though the man who beat the man becomes the man on paper, Adonis Stevenson was in position to represent that, and he didn’t.”

Stevenson, of course, is the WBC and lineal (man who beat the man) light heavyweight champion by virtue of his one-punch detonation of Chad Dawson’s jaw a little over two years ago in Montreal.

He received a hailstorm of criticism for his decision to pull the plug on a potential unification match with Kovalev by signing on with Al Haymon and taking his Kronk yellow trunks, big punch and belt to Showtime.

Stevenson has beaten Andrzej Fonfara, Dmitry Sukhotsky (who?) and Sakio Bika, a blown-up former super middleweight champion, since taking the plunge and becoming a part of Haymon’s 200-plus fighter stable.

Kovalev, in the same time period, knocked out Blake Caparello (in fairness, who?) before beating up on a pair of A-list fighters whom Stevenson had chances to fight but ultimately passed.

Those would be the aforementioned Hopkins, who got tired of waiting on Stevenson and elected to fight Kovalev himself, losing a one-sided decision, and Jean Pascal, the former lineal champion who didn’t hear the final bell for the first time in his career against the Krusher.

Kovalev unified three-fourths of the light heavyweight title with his win over Hopkins, and he faces the IBF’s mandatory challenger Nadjib Mohammedi Saturday night at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas (10 p.m. ET/HBO).

Up soon for the Krusher, per Dan Rafael of ESPN.com, could be undisputed super middleweight champion and pound-for-pound entrant Andre Ward. Discussions are already underway for that fight in the near future.

It’s his propensity for seeking out big fights, and building both legacy and his bank account, that leads Hopkins—who knows a fair bit about both—to praise Kovalev while taking a few barely veiled jabs at Stevenson.

“They have to stop hiding, the fighters, they call themselves that, hiding behind their business people. And say this is my career. This is my legacy,” Hopkins said. “I’m going to be judged by what I didn’t do more than what I did. But they’re not going to have that mentality, and it takes someone that’s brave enough to pull the covers off this behavior.

“You can make money, and you can lose money, but one thing they can’t erase is legacy. Legacy has no price, has no compromise. Once it’s achieved, no one can take it back from you. To certain people, it means a lot. To some, it doesn’t mean anything.”

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Now, in some semblance of fairness to Stevenson, Kovalev and his team don’t have entirely clean hands on the question of why this fight hasn't happened yet.

Main Events President Kathy Duva—a fierce advocate for her fighters—successfully lobbied the WBC to take the highly unusual step of anointing Kovalev, a recognized champion in three other sanctioning bodies, its mandatory challenger.

A purse bid was called with a 50-50 split, but Duva pulled out before it could take place, citing Kovalev’s exclusive network contract with HBO. Had another promoter—ahem, someone on Haymon’s payroll—won the bid, it could’ve dictated those terms (PBC?), which would’ve potentially violated the deal.

Take that information however you’d like, so long as you remember the original decision that put this whole chain in motion and what each fighter has done since to establish his bona fides.

As for Hopkins, you can count him among the camp that doesn’t take Stevenson at his word (despite receiving it personally at a recent HBO fight) that he’ll ever fight Kovalev.

But he also believes that Kovalev will continue using Stevenson as motivation, and that will help him avoid a letdown against his little-known mandatory Saturday night.

“When you have a championship and you’re fighting a guy, when you really want to fight Stevenson, yeah, it’s always a letdown,” Hopkins said.

“But that’s when a guy gets a chance to show his greatness. To show his discipline. To show that I’m here for the long haul, and I’m going to beat everybody up until Stevenson, one way or the other.”

Richard Wolowicz/Getty Images

Hopkins has unique perspective on Kovalev’s ability to beat people up.

The now-50-year-old ageless wonder and all-time great fighter took what was easily the most lopsided and punishing defeat of his career against the Russian Krusher last November.

It was difficult to watch, particularly for those (like yours truly) who picked the Alien to find a way against a younger, bigger terminator hell bent on his destruction.

Kovalev hits like a tank, not the hardest he’s ever faced, according to Hopkins—that would be Felix Trinidad—but close and constantly getting better.

“Sergey is not a real sharp puncher, but he’s a hard, thumping puncher,” Hopkins said. “When he gets seasoned enough and gets the snap on that punch, now we’re talking about something different. Now you’re talking about power and the snap of the punches. Now you have a problem.

“Not only is he big but talented. When you look at that combination, that’s really a lot that his opponents have to overcome. He’s getting better and better every fight. That’s they key, and that’s what I’m seeing.”

Talk about a scary thought—for Stevenson, the rest of the light heavyweight division and, most acutely, Mohammedi, who has to deal with that big, strong improving puncher next.

Kevin McRae is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. You can follow him on Twitter @McRaeWrites. All quotes were obtained personally from a one-on-one interview.